The Patna High Court has reiterated that a victim of a crime, unlike a complainant has absolute right to appeal against the acquittal and is not required to even seek appeal.
The division bench comprising of Justice Khatim Reza and Justice Chakradhari Sharan Singh was adjudicating upon an appeal under Section 372 CrPC against the Sessions Court's acquittal of the respondents for the offences punishable under Sections 323 and 302 r/w Section 34 of IPC.
Since informant who happened to be the brother of deceased was no more, the widow of the deceased had filed the appeal, the statutory right of which flows from Section 2(wa) of the Criminal Procedure Code (Amendment) Act, 2008.
The Court noted that the right of filing appeal under Section 372 of Criminal Procedure Code has accrued on account of the insertion of the proviso to Section 372 Criminal Procedure Code which came to be inserted by Act 05 of 2009 with effect from 31.12.2009 confering upon victim right to prefer an appeal against any order passed by the Court acquitting the accused or convicting an accused for a lesser offence or imposing inadequate compensation and as per the said proviso, such appeal shall lie to the Court to which an appeal ordinarily lies against the order of conviction of such Court.
The Court mentioned Mallikarjun Kodagali (Dead) represented through Legal Representatives Vs. State of Karnataka & Ors., 2018 Latest Caselaw 758 SC in which it was laid down that a victim has absolute right to prefer an appeal against the order of acquittal and therefore he/she is not required to even seek leave to appeal as required in case of “complainant” while preferring the appeal under Section 378(4) Criminal Procedure Code.
Noting that the principles which are germane for considering an appeal against acquittal are well settled in various decisions of the Supreme Court, the Court referred to Ramanand Yadav Vs. Prabhu Nath Jha & Ors, 2003 Latest Caselaw 538 SC, Kallu @ Masih & Ors Vs. State of Madhya Pradesh, 2006 Latest Caselaw 10 SC
In background of the above, the Court was of the view that the prosecution has failed to establish the allegation against the respondents nos. 2 to 5 beyond reasonable doubt. It opined that the Trial Court rightly discarded the evidence of P.W. 1 to 5, there being apparent inconsistency as has been noticed in paragraphs 12, 14, 15, 17 and 19 of the judgement of the Trial Court. The finding recorded by the trial court does not suffer from any legal infirmity requiring this Courts interference, it said.
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Conclusively, the appeal was dismissed.
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